David Cameron is giving a speech on prisoner rehabilitation and the criminal justice system. Photograph: Charles O'Rear/Corbis

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4.43pm BST

Afternoon summary

• David Cameron has signalled that he will block any attempt to increase the EU budget by more than inflation. In a statement on the EU summit, he said that several EU countries had signed a letter saying an above-inflation budget increase would be unacceptable. The EU budget settlement had to be "rigorous", he said.

• Cameron has sidestepped questions about whether a no vote in the referendum he is proposing on a renegotiated relationship with the EU would lead to Britain leaving the EU. Although he has not formally committed himself to a referendum, he has said that he wants to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU and that a referendum would then be the simplest way of obtaining public consent for that. During the statement, two Tory MPs, Peter Bone and Mark Reckless, asked if a no vote would lead to Britain leaving the EU or whether it would be an "in/in" referendum, with a no vote endorsing the status quo. Cameron refused to answer.

The prime minister does not seem to realise that all his bluster about fighting for Britiain is meaningless if he alienates our natural supporters ... He really has become the guy who goes to Europe and picks a fight in an empty room - which is just as well because he normally finds himself in an empty room ...

The reality is he has lost control of his party on Europe. We have a prime minister outside the room looking in at Britain's empty seat at the table. There's one thing that our allies in Europe and the British people can agree on: his government's a shambles and it's Britain that suffers.

• Philip Dunne, a defence minister, has told MPs that Scotland could lose Royal Navy defence contracts if it went independent. This is what he said when he was asked about the matter at defence questions.

The UK has not built a complex warship outside these shores since the second world war; we remain committed to using UK industry to build UK warships.

In the unlikely event that Scotland should decide to separate from the UK, the Scottish defence industry would only be eligible to bid for contracts placed by a future Scottish government, or competed for outside the UK, placed by the UK or other governments. Many UK defence contracts are exempted from procurement rules for national security reasons.

What, then, are the messages that chime with the majority of defectors? Redistribution won’t do it. Just 21 per cent want the government to “do far more to help the poor,” while 27 per cent, would prefer the opposite—cutting welfare payments “because the poor should take more responsibility for themselves.” Loyalists prefer redistribution to welfare cuts by two-to-one.

There is one radical policy that most defectors support. A law limiting maximum pay to £1m a year is supported by 58 per cent. But two right-wing policies are at least as popular: 59 per cent of defectors want Britain to leave the EU, and a huge 78 per cent want “net immigration reduced to zero”.

Equally, though, activists who reassure themselves that Labour’s core supporters reject such views should think again. As many as 41 per cent of loyalists also want Britain out of the EU, and two-thirds of them back zero net immigration. One of the key findings from this analysis is that Labour defectors generally hold more right-wing views than many party activists like to think—but so do millions of Labour loyalists.

First, [Cameron] – like Gordon – is trying to announce his way out of the crisis, going into each Sunday morning and each PMQs with a fresh attempt to get on top of the news agenda with some random, focus group designed announcement. At its very least, this is a waste of potentially good stories and speeches which should be held back until there’s a chance of them being heard; worse, it leads to the bungled announcement of half-baked policies, like the fuel bills balls-up; and worse still, it leads to ridiculous headlines like “Cameron: Now Mug A Hoodie”.

Second, he and his team are fighting forest fires with buckets of sand, when what they need is proper firebreaks, i.e. moments when the pre-existing political news agenda is suspended (or at least turned into a backdrop) while another issue or event comes to the fore. It could be a Budget, a Queen’s Speech, a trip to Washington, a Defence White Paper: anything which obliges the political media to focus their attention elsewhere for a few days, not least – to put it crudely – if they want to get an exclusive preview. So where are the Coalition’s firebreaks? The only one I can see on the horizon is George Osborne’s Autumn Statement on 5th December; that feels a long time away.

The [IMF] authors believe that this is because the fiscal multipliers have turned out to be higher than was assumed when the austerity programmes were designed. In fact, they suggest that the multiplier under current circumstances might be as large as 0.9-1.7, compared to the initial assumption of 0.5.

If true, the implication of this would be critical. If the multiplier is 0.5, then an initial public expenditure reduction of 1 per cent of GDP reduces real output by 0.5 per cent. Using normal rules of thumb, this drop in output would in turn reduce taxation or increase public transfers by about 0.2 per cent of GDP, leaving the budget deficit improving by 0.8 per cent of GDP. This ratio of budget improvement to reduced growth might be just about acceptable to democratic governments.

If, however, the multiplier is 1.7, then the same initial public spending cut of 1 per cent of GDP would reduce real output by 1.7 per cent. The second round effects of this reduction in output would reduce tax or raise transfers by 0.68 per cent. The net overall improvement in the budget deficit would therefore be only 0.32 per cent. The economy would be in recession, and the budget deficit would hardly improve at all. Even if this were acceptable to governments, it would not be acceptable for very long to their electorates.

4.43pm BST

I've already posted some reaction to the David Cameron speech (or pre-reaction, because it was available before the full text of the speech was published). See 10.57am. Here's some more.

It is all very well to pay providers by results but you must have a result that is meaningful in the first place.

The Ministry of Justice is looking at paying providers on whether individuals are reconvicted or not but this is a blunt measure that does not reflect the reality of how people desist from crime. Rather than simply shift from offending to not offending like an electrical switch, people who offend tend to lead chaotic lives and slip in and out of trouble with the law.

Sometimes progress is better measured in whether people are reoffending less seriously or less frequently than before. But that kind of progress would not be measured under current proposals, which raises questions as to what success any providers will be able to produce.

We welcome that David Cameron has made clear his determination to focus on ‘making prison work’ using effective rehabilitation, but this policy will only work if the government scales up its commitment to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes in prisons that actually succeed in reducing reoffending. It is clear from our analysis that ensuring prisoners get access to good quality drug treatment programmes will significantly help deliver the results he seeks.

An intensive recovery approach cuts costs as well as crime. For every 100 individuals, the RAPt programme saves £6.3 million on re-sentencing and re-incarcerating. This would equate to savings of £440 million a year if the programme was offered to just 10% of drug dependent prisoners.

From Rhodri Davies, policy manager at the Charities Aid Foundation

The prime minister is right that payment by results contracts have potential to help charities use their expertise to tackle intractable social problems such as reoffending.

But ministers need to improve the way these contracts are designed so charities are not simply squeezed out in favour of large private sector providers. Most charities simply cannot afford to take on contracts to tackle social problems without up-front funding because they are not allowed to carry large financial reserves and have limited access to capital compared to for-profit businesses.

• Cameron has dismissed some of the government's recent difficulties as "processology" and said that he is focusing on the "big picture". This is what he said when asked about claims that the government was losing its grip.

We need to focus on the big picture. What actually happened last week is that unemployment fell, inflation fell, waiting lists in our hospitals fell, crime fell, the right decision was made about Gary McKinnon. Those are the important things that are happening in an economy where we've created a million private sector jobs in the last two years. There will always be people that will go on endlessly about process and processology and Kremlinology and all the rest of it, what actually matters is what is happening out there.

• Cameron has defended his decision to try to hang on to Andrew Mitchell as chief whip.

It's the easiest thing in the world as prime minister to just sack someone at the drop of a hat when something goes wrong. I thought the right thing to do was to make sure there was a proper apology.

The police didn't want to take it further but it did become apparent he wasn't going to be able to do his job so the right conclusion was reached. It takes longer to discover whether someone can or can't do their job. It's much easier just to fire people, I actually think that is not the right approach.

• Ministers have hinted that they are backing away from plans to allow the recall of MPs.In response to a report from the Commons political and constitutional reform committee, which said the plan should be abandoned, the government said its plan to allow voters to trigger a byelection where an MP is guilty of serious wrong-doing was "an entirely novel mechanism for our political landscape". The government said it was still committed to the idea, but it signalled that nothing is going to happen soon. "To give due consideration to the committee's conclusions and recommendations, the government wishes to take the proper time to reflect on this policy and determine its future direction," it said.

• Alun Michael and Tony Lloyd have resigned as Labour MPs because they are standing as candidates in the police commissioner elections next month.

4.43pm BST

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron (R) is escorted around C wing by prison officer Margaret Vaughan, during his visit to Wormwood Scrubs Prison in west London October 22, 2012. Photograph: PAUL HACKETT/REUTERS

Here's some copy from the Press Association about David Cameron's visit to Wormwood Scrubs this morning.

David Cameron tried to put a week of heavy political criticism behind him as he visited a prison in west London today. The prime minister spent a grey Monday morning touring HMP Wormwood Scrubs, ahead of a major speech designed to recapture the political agenda after weeks of difficulties for the Government. After speaking to inmates in the workshop, and seeing the prison's laundry facilities, Cameron visited a charity-run drug rehabilitation support group in C-Wing. The wing can house 300 prisoners and is nearly full to capacity. Around 45% of the inmates are currently in drug or alcohol rehabilitation programmes. The visit allowed the prime minister to view first hand a group putting into action his vision of charities, voluntary groups and private companies providing rehabilitation services to help turn prisoners' lives around and stop them reoffending. Cameron insisted that a lack of money was not an issue in bringing down the reoffending rate, saying that extending payment-by-results schemes for those helping to rehabilitate prisoners would refocus existing resources. In one of the prison's courtyards, the prime minister said: "We have got to do more for less, every place here costs £40,000, there are 600 staff that work in this prison - it's not a shortage of money, it's that we haven't been focusing people on what really matters, which is the results." Asked if it was a gamble to use private companies and charities to plug gaps, Cameron said: "We spend billions of pounds on prison and probation but we are not getting the right results. "In terms of getting charities to do more, it's happening now. I've just been sitting in a cell with a very good drug rehab charity that's working with prisoners trying to get them off drugs, get them clean. "If that works then that prisoner won't be costing us all that money, won't be robbing houses and causing chaos and won't be returning to our prison system."

Britain's prime minister David Cameron (right) is escorted by prison governor Phil Taylor as he arrives at Wormwood Scrubs prison in west London on 22 October 2012. Photograph: PAUL HACKETT/AFP/Getty ImagesThe prime minister, David Cameron (centre), is escorted around C wing by prison officer Margaret Vaughan (right) and governor Phil Taylor during his visit to Wormwood Scrubs prison in west London. Photograph: Paul Hackett/PA

4.43pm BST

Who would be a politician? They are expected to know what they think, and to be principled and consistent. Yet we (at least, we in the media) are also always expecting them to say something new. It's a hard ask.

Today Cameron managed to package his thoughts about law and order into a coherent whole quite effectively. He covered most aspects of the criminal justice system. But, as a speech, it did not really pass the "new" test at all. Cameron has been talking about the need for better rehabilitation and the advantages of payment-by-results for years and, although he did announce a national roll-out today, the whole point of piloting these programmes is to pave the way for national implementation, and so this did not come as a huge surprise. (And, by the way, the Peterborough scheme praised by Chris Grayling this morning - see 10.09am - was launched under Labour.) Cameron also rattled through various "tougher penalty" measures, but almost all of them had been trailed before.

Politicians can solved the consistent/new dilemma by dreaming up a fresh slogan to explain their approach and Cameron had a go at this. He would be "tough but intelligent", he said. Fine. But it's not exactly catchy.

4.43pm BST

Here's some more from the section of the Cameron Q&A that I missed because it was not shown on Sky or BBC News.

From ITV's Chris Ship

Asked PM why Mitchell kept job so long: easiest thing to fire on spot but have to make right decision however uncomfortable/difficult 4 govt

I think these [BBC] investigations are important and they are independent and they need absolutely to be seen to be independent. The nation is appalled, we are all appalled, by the allegations of what Jimmy Savile did and they seem to get worse by the day. And so every organisation that was involved with him, whether the NHS or the BBC, needs to get to the bottom of what happened.

And the developments today are concerning because the BBC has effectively changed its story about why it dropped the Newsnight programme about Jimmy Savile. So these are serious questions. They need to be answered. They need to be answered by these independent reviews that the BBC has established and I'm sure that they will be.

4.43pm BST

Sky and BBC News have now dropped their coverage of the Cameron Q&A.

4.43pm BST

Cameron says having police and crime commissioners will increase accountability.

4.43pm BST

The first question comes from someone from the Prison Reform Trust.

Q: What will you do to promote restorative justice?

Cameron says this has a part to play. But the government has to take the public with it. People do understand the value of restorative justice. But the government has to show them that these measures can be tough.

Q: Do you have confidence in the BBC to carry out the investigation into itself in relation to Jimmy Savile?

Cameron says today's developments at the BBC are "concerning". The BBC has "effectively changed its story". The BBC's investigation has to be thorough, he says.

4.43pm BST

Cameron has finished now.

He is going to take questions.

4.43pm BST

Cameron now turns to prevention. Strong families can prevent people from turning to crime, and that is why the government is trying to turn around the lives of troubled families.

The government is doing more to promote discipline in schools.

And pupil referral units will be turned into academies if they are not performing. Too many of them are just staging posts to a place in a young offender centre, he says.

4.43pm BST

Cameron is now talking about punishment.

All community punishments will in future contain an element of punishment, he says. An amendment to legislation to this effect will be introduced tomorrow, he says.

The use of GPS tags will be extended (see 10.42am) and other punishments wll be made tougher, he says. He says no one will be able to accuse the governnment of not being tough.

But being tough on its own is not enough, he says.

I’m not going to try and out-bid any other politician on toughness, saying “let’s just bang them up for longer, let’s have more isolation, and once they’re out they’re on their own”.

I say: let’s use that time we’ve got these people inside to have a proper positive impact on them, for all our sakes.

It’s not a case of ‘prison works’ or ‘prison doesn’t work’ – we need to make prison work.

And once people are on the outside, let’s stick with them, let’s give them proper support…

That’s why this government is engaged in what can only be described as a rehabilitation revolution – led by the new justice secretary, Chris Grayling.

His main, driving mission is this: to see more people properly punished, but fewer offenders returning to the system.

To achieve that, we’re saying to charities, companies and voluntary organisations – come and help us rehabilitate our prisoners.

4.43pm BST

Cameron is talking about the court system.

The government has made courts more flexible, he says. Their hours are being extended.

And he announces the government will appoint a new victims commissioner. The previous commissioner, Louise Casey, is now in charge of the troubled families unit.

4.43pm BST

Cameron says the government has saved the police from top-down targets.

He says Labour said police cuts would lead to less neighbourhood policing and rising crime. But crime rates are going down, and neighbourhood policing is increasing, he says.

And he says the election of police commissioners will make a difference. People claim the public are not interested in these elections, he says. But the website mapping local crime has received 500m hits. That shows people are interested in local policing, he says.

4.43pm BST

Cameron is now on a passage not released in advance.

He praises the police. He says they leave home every morning knowing that they could be killed in the line of duty. Years ago he used to go running past Wormwood Scrubs, he says. On his route, he saw a memorial to three officers killed in 1966. And he mentions the two female police officers killed in Manchester recently.

4.43pm BST

David Cameron's speech

David Cameron Photograph: Sky News

David Cameron is speaking now.

He is at an event hosted by the Centre for Social Justice, the thinktank set up by Iain Duncan Smith. He says he is looking forward to the CSJ's forthcoming report following up on the Breakthrough Britain report it published several years ago.

There does not seem to be much in the speech so far that was not in the extracts released in advance. (See 9.52am.)

4.43pm BST

David Cameron will be delivering his crime speech shortly.

As background, it is worth reminding everyone that crime rates in England and Wales are falling and that the chances of becoming a crime victim are at their lowest since the early 1980s. Alan Travis has more details here.

• Number 10 reaffirmed David Cameron's opposition to an above-inflation increase in the EU budget. "We do not see the need for an increase in spending above the rate of inflation," the spokesman said. He would not say what measure of inflation Cameron would use to judge any proposed budget increase. And he said Number 10 had not been told by the Germans that Angela Merkel would cancel next month's EU summit if Cameron was determined to veto the proposed budget, as the Financial Times reports today (paywall).

• Cameron has not ruled out having a public inquiry into the Jimmy Savile affair. But the government is not ordering one now because it wants to allow the police, BBC and Department of Health inquiries to be allowed to take their course, the spokesman said.

• Downing Street refused to say whether Cameron thought Andrew Mitchell should take the severance payment he is entitled to claim after resigning from the government. "It is up to the minister [to decide whether to take it]," the spokesman said.

• Number 10 said that Savile's knighthood could not be removed posthumously because people lose their knighthoods when they die anyway. In response to a question from the reporter, the spokesman said there were no plans to change the law to allow people to keep their knighthoods posthumously so that Savile could then be stripped of his.

4.43pm BST

At the lobby briefing we were told "operationally" (ie, on the understanding that it would not be published at that point) the name of a prison David Cameron was visiting this morning.

But, on Twitter, Cameron had already revealed all.

Visiting Wormwood Scrubs Prison to see how our "tough but intelligent" approach to crime is working.

I very much welcome this revisiting of criminal justice policy, but equally I am deeply sceptical about whether David Cameron can actually deliver his ‘Tough But Intelligent’ criminal justice agenda because, whether you call it the ‘Rehabilitation Revolution’ as he does, or as Tony Blair called it 15 years ago ‘Tough on Crime Tough on the Causes of Crime”, it is ultimately about the same thing in practice; rhetoric about reducing crime.

And, while Tony Blair had all the resources of Government behind him in 1997 to deliver his tough on crime tough on the causes of crime policy, we no longer have that luxury – and even with all the resources, Blair gave us 3,000 new criminal offences, 25,000 more prisoners and he failed to address entirely the Tough on the Causes of Crime part of the policy at all.

Blair left us with even more of the high-crime, inner-city housing estates that existed when he came to power, and with precisely the same degree of unemployment, school exclusions, poor parenting, drug misuse and gang cultures existing when he left.

Forced by a lack of resources to fund his policy Cameron is turning to the private and voluntary sector to help him deliver his ‘Tough But Intelligent’ policy to be announced later today, relying on a ‘Payments By Results’ method of funding it – but behind the scenes I can tell you there are huge arguments about what the ‘Payment By Results’ mechanism actually means – what ‘results’ amount to ‘results’, who assesses those ‘results’ and what level of ‘payment’ are we talking about here?

From Vicki Helyar-Cardwell, director of the Criminal Justice Alliance

This speech was an opportunity to regain the momentum promised at the start of the coalition government to drive forward a genuine rehabilitation revolution to cut crime, prioritise prevention and reduce the damaging levels of reoffending. The danger is the intelligent bit gets lost at the expense of sounding tough.

A truly smart approach would be to focus on offenders making amends for their wrongdoing, treating drug and alcohol addictions that can fuel crime and getting ex-offenders back into real work. Much of this relies on wider society – organisations and people outside of the criminal justice system. The real strength of the Prime Minister’s 2006 so-called ‘hug a hoodie speech’ is that it recognised that criminal justice and social justice are inextricably linked. Yet several years on, the criminal justice system still often picks up the pieces when others have failed, the high levels of children in care who end up in our youth justice system are a telling example of this ...

Criminal Justice Alliance organisations, working in prisons and with offenders and their families in the community, report that prison overcrowding and budget cuts mean rehabilitation is being undermined. Making governors more accountable for what happens after prison is welcome, but this will backfire without efforts to curb huge prison overcrowding that blights much of the positive work in prisons. Overcrowding extracts a heavy price from prisoners, prison staff and voluntary sector working to cut reoffending, and ultimately harms communities to which ex-prisoners will return.

The Prime Minister’s speech comes the week after the Chief Inspector of Prisons said that in order to deliver a rehabilitation revolution, government needs to reduce numbers of people in prison or invest more in prison budgets.

It’s clear the government has had a bad week when the Prime Minister pops up on a Monday with a crowd-pleasing policy announcement. Recent re-launches have been shared by senior Lib Dems and Tories following the collapse of Lords reform, for example, to demonstrate that the Coalition is still working well. But today, the Lib Dems are nowhere to be seen: the Prime Minister’s big crime announcement is a response to a terrible week for the Conservative party, rather than the coalition as a whole.

The speech is being presented by some in the media as a response to the Government’s difficult week but, in reality, the speech and whole approach has long been in the pipeline. Chris Grayling was thinking about a rehabilitation revolution when he was Shadow Home Secretary. Working with Nick Herbert and the Centre for Social Justice the Tory leadership was interested in reducing reoffending rates for most of the last seven years.

From Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary

There is nothing intelligent or tough about cutting frontline police officers, reducing the power of judges to give tough sentences or cutting support for innocent victims of crime.

This is nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover up Andrew Mitchell losing his job on Friday and 29 wasted months of dithering on law and order. This out of touch Government must think the public are stupid - it’s these kind of actions that makes the public so cynical about politicians.

[Dowden] said: “Most of my time is spent on day-to-day crisis management — is the term we use.”

The aide jokingly added that “we are not permanently in crisis” before disclosing how he was trying to ensure that Conservative MPs stayed “on message” during media interviews.

However, he admitted that he often only discovered the daily political agenda by listening to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“Of course, the first thing I do in the morning, if I’m not woken up by my very young children, I turn on the Today programme and hear what’s going on,” he said. “Hopefully we will have some sense of what’s coming up anyway, but often you’ll get surprised by what’s going on …”

“With most of them the initial instinct has been ‘Why would we want to do that?’,” she said. “We got rebuffed by a lot of aerobics classes in Billericay. The evening classes were like ‘Why would we want to do that?’ – but finally we got a day one. But once they have started, there is no stopping them. You can kind of feel an awakening in them, because they love it, because no one ever asked them normally.

“It’s pretty bad. They feel like we don’t understand their lives. They obviously get most of their impressions of politicians from TV – Prime Minister’s Questions and clips from the news. They all think we’re absolutely ridiculous the way we shout and abuse each other. In interviews, they think that we won’t answer the questions and just say what we were going to say anyway.”

A more sensitive soul might find it depressing to hear their profession traduced in this way, but Ms de Piero asserts that she likes the contact with ordinary people. What gets her down is getting on the train back to Westminster, where people work “in a bubble”, and where MPs know that they have a serious problem with their public image but do not know what to do about it.

The answer, she believes, is to persuade more people from working class backgrounds doing everyday jobs to stand for Parliament – although she admits she does not know how that can be achieved when the process for getting selected seems designed to put off anyone who is not a political obsessive.

And here are the main points from the inteview that Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, gave to the Today programme about the government's rehabilitation initiative. I've taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.

• Grayling said that too many prisoners were released without being given help to stop them reoffending.

The reality at the moment, all too often, is that we release somebody on to the streets after prison, with £46 in their pocket, relatively little, if any, support. Probation officers do good work with those who have been in prison for longer periods; those who’ve been in prison for shorter periods get no support at all.

• He said he wanted private companies and charities to be involved in running payment-by-results rehabilitation programmes.

• He rejected suggestions that providers would be incentivised to fiddle the figures. "In many ways the measurements for payment-by-results in criminal justice are very binary," he said. "Do you reoffend or don’t you? if you're back in court, back in a police cell, then it’s not worked and the providers don’t get paid."

• He said former offenders could play an important role in rehabilitation programmes.

I’ve seen examples in community projects of former offenders, perhaps former gang members, mentoring younger offenders to say, ‘Well look, I’ve been through it all, I’ve gone straight - there’s a better place to be.' That can be enormously powerful, and you’ve got a lot of that in the voluntary sector.

• He said that, having promoted payment-by-results in the work programme as welfare minister, he was keen to apply the same principle in the justice system.

I think it’s a very silly thing to say. I’m very sorry he’s said that. Nobody should ever look upon a democratic election as something they shouldn't take part in.

4.43pm BST

Here are some more key points from the Cameron speech, based on the (fairly lengthy) extracts released overnight.

• Cameron will argue that he has been trying to introduce a new "tough but intelligent" approach to law and order. He will say that being "tough but intelligent" is a way of avoiding just being authoritarian or liberal. That is just a "sterile debate", he will say. See 9.07am. (Unfortunately, this passage of the speech just sounds like a pale imitation of Tony Blair's "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". Cameron might have been better just adopting that slogan wholesale.)

• He will say that criminals deserve "retribution".

Retribution is not a dirty word, it is important to society that revulsion against crime is properly recognised.

By the end of 2015, I want to see payment by results spread right across rehabilitation.

• He will say that rehabilitation programmes will be offered to prisoners serving short sentences, not just to offenders who have been jailed for a year or more, as happens now.

• He will say that tackling crime is part of the "aspiration nation" agenda he set out in his party conference speech. "We will not rise as a country if we leave millions behind and write off whole communities," he will say.

4.43pm BST

David Cameron is going to give a speech on law and order later today and in it he is going to complain that politicians who speak on criminal justice are either portrayed as authoritarian, bang-’em-up merchants or soppy liberals.

For many people, I’m the person associated with those three words, two of which begin with ‘H’, and one of which is ‘hoodie’…

…even though I never actually said it.

For others, I’m the politician who has argued for tough punishment.

So do I take a tough line on crime – or a touchy-feely one?

In no other public debate do the issues get polarised like this.

On climate change you don’t have to be in denial or campaigning to get every car off the road.

Life isn’t that simple – so government policy isn’t that simple.

And yet with the crime debate, people seem to want it black or white.

Lock ‘em up or let ‘em out.

Blame the criminal or blame society.

‘Be tough’ or ‘act soft’.

Cameron will argue that this binary approach is simplistic and he will say that he wants to “move the debate on”. But, judging by the way the speech has been reported so far, he’s not having much luck. The speech was previewed in the Mail on Sunday yesterday in a story that suggested it was all about hellfire-and-damnation authoritarianism. The headline read: "Cameron: 'It's time to mug a hoodie.'" Having read the speech extracts released overnight, I see that it’s not like that all; it’s mostly about promoting more prisoner rehabilitation by extending the payment-by-results scheme. Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, was talking about this on the Today programme about an hour ago. I’ll publish more extracts from the speech, and highlights from the Grayling interview, soon, as well as covering the speech and the reaction to it when it happens.

As usual, I'll also be covering all the breaking political news as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary after Cameron's speech and another in the afternoon.